


Many a New Day Will Dawn Before I Do

by itsactuallycorrine



Category: Veep (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M, Marriage Proposal, Past Amy/Buddy, Post-Season/Series 06, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-30
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2019-03-11 08:46:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13520724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsactuallycorrine/pseuds/itsactuallycorrine
Summary: Five times Amy is proposed to, and one time she proposes





	Many a New Day Will Dawn Before I Do

I.

In her sophomore year of college, Amy has a pregnancy scare. She makes the mistake of mentioning it to her boyfriend at the time—Chad, or Charlie, or Gabe, she can’t remember—before she even takes a single pregnancy test. But honestly, the idea of being a single mother, college dropout like Sophie scares the shit out of her. She just needs someone to hold her hand for a second, because she’s young enough that she hasn’t been able to completely repress all vulnerability yet.

The boyfriend—maybe it was Grant?—reacts by blurting, “We should get married,” and it’s the last straw for Amy. She breaks up with him then and there, baby or not.

She knows even then she’s not the sort of woman to get married just because of an accidental pregnancy. 

And as luck would have it, it’s a false-alarm anyway.

 

II.

Amy  _ hates _ Nevada. She hates the desert, she hates the mountains, she hates the idleness of being unemployed, and she’s starting to hate Buddy a little (a lot) too. She has too much time to think, not enough to keep herself busy, and if she doesn’t find some outlet soon, there’s a very good chance that she and Buddy are going to make headlines as the most gruesome murder-suicide in history. 

After she’s been in Carson City for six months, Buddy takes her out for a nice, sit-down dinner and Amy knows it’s time to seize control of her life.

Once the wine has been ordered, she struggles to paste on a smile as Buddy takes her hand and stares soulfully at her. “Amy, I know it’s been a rough transition, moving out here to be with me, but I want you to know how much I appreciate it. And I’ve been thinking about the future— _ our _ future—and—”

“I have, too,” she admits, and is he really just going to play into her hands like this? She resists the urge to pump her fist. “I think I know where you’re going with this, and I agree completely.”

He beams at her. “So you’ll marry me? Sweetheart, you’ve made the happiest man on the planet.” Releasing her hand, he fumbles in his jacket pocket for a velvet box and misses the flash of dismay across her face.

Amy considers the ring he produces and the situation at hand, and meets his gaze coolly. “Of course. I think a married man will play well with the voters. They’ll want a governor who’s settled down.”

Buddy frowns. “Governor?”

Warming to her topic, she nods and leans forward. “Married politicians always poll better. And a campaign wedding with your campaign manager—by the way, I’m running your campaign... That shit basically writes itself. You’ll be a lock.” After sliding the ring on her finger, she rests her hand on his arm and watches as he stares at the modest diamond like it’s a snake poised to strike. “What do you think?”

After a long breath, he smiles at her, in that patently-false wholesome Howdy-Doody way she’s come to loathe, and says, “I think you’re going to make a very interesting First Lady of Nevada.”

And Amy ignores the fact that this is the most alive she’s felt since leaving the White House.

 

III.

The longest conversation Amy and Dan have about the pregnancy is a hushed exchange on the way back from the Madison-Monroe dinner. Yes, she is keeping the baby and no, she doesn’t expect anything of him, and now is not exactly the best time to discuss this, Dan, jesus.

Amy coasts through the first trimester relatively unscathed and without anyone—i.e. Selina—finding out. But of course, it can’t last, and Amy finds herself the recipient of a speech the likes of which Selina’s doled out to several others, including her own daughter.

“You know, with the campaign and everything, this is not really the best time for you to be up the duff. Jesus Christ, Amy, what were you thinking? You’re going to be a terrible mom.” Selina slides her glasses off and stares Amy down across the desk of the New York office. “It’s not too late to get rid of it, is it?”

Amy takes a deep breath and resists the urge to grind her molars into dust. “Will all due respect, ma’am, this is something I’ve been thinking about a while and, although it’s not the way I expected it to happen… I’m keeping the baby. I’ve thought this through and I’ll just be coming back from maternity leave in time to really kick things into gear for the primaries. Working mothers are one of your key demographics—imagine how this will play out nationally. They’re going to love the fact that the first woman president’s campaign is being run by a single, working mother.”

“Single, huh? Who’s the father? It’s not that dick-waving stringbean from Nevada you abandoned me for, is it?” Selina stands and crosses the room. “Because we may need to throw a veneer of family values on this clusterfuck of a situation if it doesn’t play as well as you think it will. And that guy? May do more harm than good.”

“It’s not Buddy, ma’am. And the father’s a non-issue. He doesn’t want to be in the picture.”

“Who doesn’t want to be in what picture?” Ben asks as he, Kent, and Dan walk into the office without knocking.

“Gentlemen, come right in,” Selina says with a sardonic twist of her lips. “It’s not like I’m the former President of the United States, or anything, after all.”

“Apologies, ma’am.” Richard sticks his head through the door. “You asked for me to show them right in when they arrived.”

Selina waves him off and asks for Gary to be sent in as well, before she tells the men to sit. “Our little Amy is having a baby,” she announces without any warning, and Amy does her best not to look at Dan. “The father isn’t in the picture.”

“Oh, my God, a baby!” Gary clutches the open door with a happy little laugh.

“I’m glad it’s finally out in the open,” Kent says. “I’ve been wondering when you’d make the announcement, Amy.”

Selina perches on the edge of the couch next to Ben and turns to him. “Amy thinks this will play well, help solidify the whole working-mother swing vote. What do you think?”

Ben sighs. “I think it’ll go over well with the liberal elite and feminists, but they’ve always been your core voter base, ma’am. It’s the everyday people this won’t fly with. Your Midwesterners and Southerners and suburbanites. You know, the people who fucked you over in the last few elections.” He turns to Amy. “If it comes down to it, you may have only two options: get married to this prick who’d walk away from his kid or leave the campaign. Are you prepared to do either?”

Amy’s blood is pounding through her head, and she can’t believe they’re asking this of her. After all she’s sacrificed for Selina Meyer, all the shit she’s eaten, and names she’s been called, and dignity she’s lost… There’s an acid reply on the back of her tongue, something about how they’d never ask this of a male campaign manager, how it would be a complete non-issue to the public eye if she were a man who’d gotten someone pregnant, but she swallows it. If she wanted a fair and just system, she wouldn’t be working in politics. “I’ll do what I have to,” she promises with a grim smile, and Ben nods, though not without some sympathy.

After the meeting, Amy takes five to get a breath of fresh air—or air as fresh as one can get in the Bronx—and Dan corners her.

“What the fuck, Amy? I never said I didn’t want to be in the picture,” he says, looming over her, eyes burning and mouth tight. “Hell, we haven’t talked about it at all, and now what’s going to happen if we tell everyone it’s my kid you’re carrying? They’re going to assume I’m some kind of fucking deadbeat and that you had to manipulate me into giving a shit.” 

Amy rocks back on her heels and juts her chin up. “Since when do you care what the fuck other people think about you? Dan, you’ve had weeks—plural—to tell me you want to be involved. What was I supposed to assume? And let’s be honest, you were never going to be the guy who settled down with a wife and a dog and a fucking kid. To pretend otherwise is insulting to both of us.” She sighs and rubs her forehead. “Let’s just skip to the part where you’re some tangential uncle-figure on the sidelines of my kid’s life, so no one can be disappointed when you eventually pull a goddamn Houdini and disappear.”

“I don’t even get a choice?” he asks, looking away when Amy gives him her stoniest stare. “Fine. But, Ames, if and when the shit hits the fan and the campaign goes sideways… I will marry you.”

With a scoff, she walks around him and back towards the office. “What a charming offer. I’ll pass.”

 

IV.

The shit does, of course, hit the fan, in the form of one Jane McCabe. 

Amy’s six months pregnant when she hears Selina screech and something shatter. Richard, Gary, and Marjorie make it into the office before Amy, but it’s on her that Selina focuses her rage. “Is this true?” she seethes, pointing at the TV.

_ CBS This Morning _ has her picture next to Dan’s, and Jane McCabe looks entirely too smug as she reports, “Brookheimer, you may remember, is the former fiancée of disgraced Nevada Secretary of State, Buddy Calhoun, both of whom were interviewed by Danny on this very program.” The show plays a clip of the disastrous interview when Dan, the asshole, disclosed that the two of them had a previous relationship, then cuts back to Jane. “Although Danny is once again working with Ms. Brookheimer for former President Selina Meyer, we here at  _ CBS This Morning _ will always consider him a part of our family, so congratulations Danny and Amy, on starting your own little family and extending ours!”

Brie Ramachandran dimples at Jane. “Such a beautiful story. Next up: ten ways your ice tray can kill you. CBS News investi—”

The screen goes dark, and Selina stalks toward Amy, all but vibrating. “Dan is your baby daddy? Fucking…  _ Dan??? _ And you didn’t think we might need to be forewarned about this? What the shit, Amy? Are you trying to kill this campaign? Because if so, you are doing a fan-fucking-tastic job!”

Amy manages to close her mouth. “Ma’am, I had no way of knowing this would get out. I haven’t even told my family that Dan is the father, and I can’t imagine he’s telling people either.” Although… he had been hanging around more, and bugging Amy about going to doctor’s appointments, and making sure she was eating regularly, and generally trying to insinuate himself into her life. But he wouldn’t have told anyone. Would he?

She manages to hold off Selina’s threats long enough to escape down to the temporary offices BKD had leased nearby, and storms past Dan’s assistant. “Did you leak it? Because now I have Selina up my ass and I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before we start fielding interview requests.”

Dan glances at her and then back down to his desk phone. “Mom, I have to let you go. We’ll talk later.” He ends the call and stands to pull over a chair for Amy. “Of course I didn’t leak it. Jesus, I know you think I’m an asshole, but I thought you at least understood I’m a self-serving asshole, and this doesn’t benefit me in any way.”

Settling into the chair, she kicks off her heels and stretches her legs, which have been prone to cramping at night lately and ache through the morning because of it. “Okay, fine, you didn’t leak it. Who did?” 

Dan pulls up another chair close to hers and lifts her legs over his lap, kneading his fingers into her calves. “Does it matter? It’s out there now and we can’t take it back. The only thing we can do is decide where we go from here.”

Amy bites back a moan as her muscles loosen beneath his hands and watches him through her eyelashes. “You’re being annoyingly calm about this. Selina was in a fury and wants it fixed now. Do Ben and Kent know yet?”

“They know,” Dan says, and something about the cagey look on his face sends up a red flag in Amy’s mind, but he hits a really tight spot on her leg, and this time she can’t contain the rapturous whimper, which only makes him smirk. “It’s time we talked about this. We’re having a kid in a few months, and now everyone knows it. We need to be a united front, no matter what we decide.”

With great effort, she sets her feet back on the floor and sits up straight. If they’re going to make decisions, she can’t have him touching her in any way. Crossing her arms, she clears her throat and stares him down. “Fine. You can come to doctor’s appointments and help me get everything ready for the baby, and we’ll come to some kind of custody and child support arrangement.”

“Amy, come the fuck on. You know that’s not enough if the voting public gets a hair up its collective ass.” Dan leans forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “Listen… you were right before. I never saw myself getting married or having kids or any of that, but maybe it’s time. Realistically, if I want to stay in the political game, I’m going to have to do it eventually anyway, or else combat the gossip. We all have to die sometime, right?” He smirks at her, but Amy can only stare, and after a beat he continues. “And yeah, okay, if I ever did think about getting married, I assumed it’d be to someone who could help advance my career, or at least some young, hot trophy wife.”

Amy struggles to her feet and turns away, the backs of her eyes prickling, face heating as her blood boils. But Dan just keeps fucking talking, digging himself in deeper.

“But you and I make an amazing goddamn team, Ames. You understand me and my limitations, and won’t be hurt when I fuck it all up. And I know your flaws, too. I can live with the fact that you’re kind of shrill and uptight, just like you know better than to place unreasonable expectations on me, like helping around the house or monogamy. We’re friends, we’re attracted to each other, we’re having a fucking kid.” He stands and takes her shoulders, maneuvering her until they’re face to face. Even through the haze of her anger, she can see that he looks almost… vulnerable.

“Marry me, Amy.”

She shrugs his hands off and steps back, and reminds herself he fakes vulnerable well, like he does most of the human spectrum of emotion. She wraps her arms around the bump of her stomach, swallowing past the knot in her throat. “Wow, Dan, just when I think I’ve seen the pure depths of shit that you have to offer, you somehow mine deeper and find even more. And I sincerely hope that truly awful, fucking pathetic marriage proposal was some kind of floor to the shit well, because I don’t know how you could be more insulting and not have someone flat-out murder you for it.” She forces out a laugh, and it sounds as rusty and jagged as it feels in her throat. “Maybe I am too fucking old or shrill or whatever, but at least later in life, I can say, ‘Well, I did one thing right: I didn’t fucking marry that prick Dan Egan. Bullet dodged!’” She starts to walk past, but he slides in front of her. “Out of the way, asshole.” 

“Would you calm down? I’m doing the decent thing here, if you’d stop acting like a crazy bitch for five fucking minutes. I’m sorry if I didn’t ask nice enough or whatever, but we both know what’s up. You get your friend pregnant, you offer to marry her. That’s how it works. And let’s face facts, sweetheart: it’s not like you’re gonna have a lot of options once you pop out my kid.” He rocks forward, smug eyebrows raised, and Amy has never wanted to kill him more. “And by the time you’re ready to come crawling back, who knows? I might have already found that hotter, younger wife. This is a limited time offer.”

“Pull your head out of your ass and hammer this through your fucking skull, Dan,” she grits out. “No options is still better than being chained to you.” She watches his eyes darken and a part of her thrills at the palpable hit. Before he can swipe back, she moves to the door. “I’ll have my lawyer draw up a custody agreement.”

Kent walks in to the waiting area as Amy’s showing herself out. “Good news. We’ve done some informal polling and the narrative of you and Dan reconnecting on the campaign and having a baby gave Selina a nice little spike in numbers. So far, the fact that you’re not married has little to no impact.”

Amy brushes past him with a shaky, “That’s a relief,” and waits until she’s in the cab back to Selina’s to let a few tears escape.

 

V.

Ivy Danielle Brookheimer-Egan arrives in early July, although about two weeks later than Amy would’ve liked. Being heavily pregnant in summer is up there on the list of Amy’s most hated experiences, along with Selina’s losses, her dad’s stroke, and her date with Jonah.

Amy and Dan’s cool, professional détente goes out the window as soon as Amy brings the baby home. She hires a nanny for the day, but at night it’s all on Amy and she doesn’t even make it two nights before she’s calling Dan in as backup. Together, they figure out the mechanics of diaper-changing, how to interpret all the tonal variations of Ivy’s cries, and the art of power-napping as soon as Ivy is down for any length of time.

Dan has to go back to work before Amy, but he drops by every night and crashes at her place so often that Amy allows him to bring over a few essentials. He starts making noises about moving in, but Amy can’t erase all the years of mistrust, and holds him off. This is a temporary arrangement, and she can’t let any of them become complacent.

But when the campaign takes to the road in the months before the primary election, it makes sense for them to share a room. The campaign—i.e. Catherine—is already paying for a separate room for the nanny, and Amy is concerned about how travel will impact Ivy’s sleep-schedule, so she doesn’t put up much of a fight.

They aren’t sleeping together, though. Well, to be clear, they are  _ sleeping _ together, but they aren’t having sex. At least Amy isn’t; she isn’t keeping tabs on Dan 24/7 so it’s entirely possible that at some point during the day, he’s getting some. 

But really, sex is the furthest thing from Amy’s mind. She only has two modes lately: manager and mom. Which is why when she’s talking to a local community organizer in California and he asks her to grab a drink later, she assumes it’s about the campaign and says so.

The guy—Nate, she’s like 90% sure—laughs a little sheepishly and touches her arm. “No, like just you and me. No work talk. A date-type drink.”

And he’s cute: tall, lean, sandy brown hair artfully styled, with crystal clear green eyes, and Amy feels her much-neglected woman parts come back to life. “Oh,” she says with a blink. “Um, you know I have a baby, right?”

“I’ve heard,” he says with a shrug. “So… does that mean you don’t drink?”

“I can, I’ll just have to pump enough for the night and… That’s not interesting.” She laughs self-consciously and then nods. “A drink is exactly what I need.”

Nate gets her number and walks away with a smile that Amy matches, at least until she turns and runs right into Dan. 

“You were talking to him for a while,” he says with a glance behind her. “Everything okay?”

Amy weighs her professional instincts with her need to rub her date in his face, but the former wins out, and she brushes it off. “Fine. Do you have the revised speech for me to review?” 

Between nitpicking his words and Selina’s insane demands for attention, Amy’s able to divert Dan enough. It’s not until she’s in their hotel room pumping that he suspects anything. 

“Are we drinking tonight?” he asks, laying back against the bed in sweats and t-shirt with Ivy sitting on his stomach. 

And honestly, it’s a good thing she is going out, because domestic scenes like the one in front of her are wearing her down. It doesn’t help that Ivy really is the perfect blend of both of their features: dark hair, light eyes, freckles, and the ears Amy has hated since she was a kid but somehow finds adorable on her daughter. She knows—absolutely, definitely, without a goddamn doubt—that getting together with Dan would be the wrong move. And yet… 

She shakes it off, and focuses back on her pumping. “I am. You good to stay here with the baby?”

He sits up at that, making Ivy squawk, and he distracts her with tickles. “Is there an issue? Or just networking?”

Putting away the bottle, Amy lets her lips curl. “A date actually. With that organizer I was talking to.” When the room goes quiet, she turns to find Dan watching her, eyes dark beneath drawn brows. “What?”

“Nothing,” he huffs, running his palm over Ivy’s dark whorls of hair. “If you’d rather go out with some random asshole instead of take care of your kid… who am I to judge?”

Amy barks out a laugh. “Real nice. Are you honestly going to tell me that you haven’t been getting off in every fucking state we stop in?”

“That’s different.”

“How convenient,” she says with a sneer, even as the bottom drops out of her stomach. She was so much better off without having it confirmed. 

Dan gets up from the bed, Ivy tucked against his chest. “You’re the one who didn’t want to marry me, Amy. Don’t act like I don’t have the right to fuck once in a while.”

“Yeah, well, don’t get your dick all bent out of shape just because it turns out I have a few more options than you thought. Don’t wait up,” she bites out, slamming the door behind her.

When Ivy starts wailing, Amy ignores the tug of her heart, and walks away. But the tug lingers and she hardly finishes her second drink before she brushes Nate off and goes back up to the room.

Regardless of what she’d said, Dan’s left a light on for her in the bathroom, and Amy melts when she sees Ivy in his arms, the two of them nestled in the center of the bed, the baby softly snuffling against his chest. Amy changes into her pajamas, moves Ivy to her travel crib, and nudges Dan. “Move over.”

He blinks sleepily, but shifts enough to make room for her to lay on her side, facing away from him. “You came back.” One arm wraps across her and pulls her flush against his chest. They lay together in silence and Amy wonders if he’s fallen back asleep, until he says, “I know I’m a bastard, but… do me a favor?” When she hums, his arm tightens. “Don’t fall in love with that guy.”

Amy stills. “Dan? Go back to sleep. And don’t tell me what to do.”

“I’m serious,” he says, pressing his face against her hair. “I can’t fucking take the thought of… Just, please. I don’t want to wake up one day and find out you’ve moved across the country for some guy. Again. And with Ivy… the thought of her being raised by anyone else, it just… I can’t lose—Goddammit, Amy, don’t make me fucking say it.”

Her heart is pounding, and she turns carefully in his arms, staring up at him in the darkness. “I think you have to.”

Instead he presses his mouth to hers in a desperate, messy kiss, and she can’t remember the last time they did this sober, but the instincts are all there, and soon Amy’s laying flushed and sweaty on top of him, panting against his chest.

His hands map out her bare back in soothing strokes as he lets out a jaw-cracking yawn. “Marry me,” he murmurs to the top of her head, his breathing already deepening, and Amy hesitates a moment too long before she answers.

“No.”

 

\+ I.

Selina makes it through the primaries by the skin of her teeth and accepts the party’s nomination two weeks after Ivy’s first birthday. She also has the regrettable task of announcing her running mate: Jonah Ryan.

It’s a bitter pill for all of them to swallow, but Kent’s polling indicates it’s the best way to absorb the groundswell of voters who embraced Jonah as a candidate, and to clinch the general election.

That doesn’t make it any easier.

The only consolation is when Selina wins, she can make sure Jonah is exactly the kind of VP she hated being: one without power or influence. Honestly, once the entire team accepts the idea, it’s kind of a brilliant way to neutralize Jonah for good (or four to eight years anyway).

The entire campaign team holes up in a hotel suite while the results roll in. Gary makes a big deal about it being Little Richard and Ivy’s first election, and even made them little keepsakes. Dan rolls his eyes, but Amy can tell he’s excited to be on this side of it this time. They really have a good chance of winning this thing, if the pollsters have been right so far, and it just reminds Amy that  _ this  _ is why she does it. The grueling long days, the determination, the endless fucking campaign stops… it’s all led to this night, with victory so close she can taste it.

She thinks it may be a big night personally, too.

After the primaries, everyone came back to the New York home base, and Amy held out an entire week before she told Dan he could move in. She and Ivy got too used to him being around while they were on the road, and now Amy can’t even sleep unless he’s in the bed with her.

They’re together and yet… not. They share the bed, split bills, take care of Ivy—all the hallmarks of being a couple. But Amy hasn’t been able to quite bring herself to bridge that last little trench and commit. 

Every time Dan accuses her of testing him, she argues, but yeah. Of course she’s fucking testing him, because he’s Dan and he’s a shit and a low-grade sociopath and a high-grade narcissist. She’d be insane to jump into anything without putting him through the paces first. 

But he’s done surprisingly well. Oh, he’s still an asshole of the first degree and they still argue and piss each other off and test the limits of each other’s boundaries. The thing is, though, Amy doesn’t know what her life would look like if she didn’t have that. Have him. 

And he’s a pretty good dad, if she’s being honest. Ivy adores him and Dan eats that shit up. He anticipates the baby’s every need and whim to an almost eerie degree, and there are times that Amy’s honestly jealous at how in sync the two of them are. Then she thinks about the fact that she unleashed Dan 2.0 on the world and feels a little guilty—and, okay, laughs.

Their life may not be perfect, but it suits them, and tonight, she thinks she may be ready if Dan is going to ask her what she thinks he is. He hasn’t asked in a while, but he has to know her answer has changed.

“CNN is projecting Florida for us!” Dan announces as he crosses the room with his iPad in one hand and Ivy’s hand in the other as she toddles unsteadily. A general cheer goes up. 

Amy reaches out as they get closer to the armchair she’s pulled off to the side of the room, and Dan loosens his grip so Ivy can take the last few steps herself. Once she’s safely ensconced on her mother’s lap, she nuzzles in and pops her thumb in her mouth, much to Dan’s dismay. It’s an ongoing argument between Dan and Amy, and Amy heads him off with a glare as he pulls an ottoman over and settles in close to her.

“I think we might actually win this thing,” he says instead, tapping his fingers on the arm of her chair. “BKD Consulting will have to fight off clients with a fucking stick. We’ll be king-makers. Or queen-makers, I guess,” he says with a smirk.

Amy frowns. “I’ve been with Selina so long, it’d be weird working for a different candidate.”

“She make you an offer yet?”

Making an effort to relax her jaw, she shakes her head. “I’m almost positive she’s vetting other people for Chief of Staff, and I’ll be damned before I settle for anything less.” She catches the gleam in his eyes and it makes her breath catch. “Why? You have something else in mind for my future?”

He hums. “I do.” Brows raised, he leans in close, one hand covering hers over Ivy’s back. “And I think you know where I’m going.”

The hair on the back of her neck stands at attention and the air all but crackles between them, and Amy’s sure that CNN could report the end of the world right now and neither of them would notice. “I have a pretty good idea.”

“I think you should take my spot at BKD. I want to run for Congress and I want you to run my campaign,” he says, and Amy’s rose-colored bubble bursts.

“Oh.” She sits back and shifts Ivy, now fast asleep, to buy time so he can’t see the disappointment stamped all over her face. But she feels it—deep in the pit of her stomach, along with the humiliation that she really thought… But then something dawns on her, and she’s back on even ground. 

“What do you think?” he asks, and Amy meets his eye, and this time she’s able to see the very real vulnerability that lurks there. 

It helps steady her as she considers the idea. “I’m actually kind of pissed I didn’t think of it first,” she admits, and he grins at her, until she says, “But…”

“Hit me,” he says with a determined nod, although his brow furrows. “I’ve thought this through: short-term, long-term, you name it.”

“Dan, you couldn’t strategize your way out of a fucking paper bag.” Amy rolls her eyes. “But there’s only one big issue I see that could hinder your campaign. Me.” She takes a deep breath. “We need to get married.” When Dan just gapes at her, she presses on. “A single father candidate would only be sympathetic if he’s a widower, or maybe divorced. But an unmarried father living in sin with his campaign manager? It’s a fucking attack ad waiting to happen.”

“You’re right,” Dan says after he manages to close his mouth, eyes dancing. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. We need to get married.” He smirks at her. “I assume you have a ring, or…?”

She scoffs, even as she fights the urge to smile. “Like you did the half-dozen times you proposed to me?”

“Half-dozen? C’mon, Ames, I have some self-respect. It couldn’t have been more than four.” He kisses her, pausing to take his time. 

“They’re calling Virginia for you, ma’am,” Kent says from the other room. Another victory cry goes up, and Dan settles back on the ottoman.

“Don’t tell anyone tonight,” Amy says. “At least not until they call it.” She considers and shakes her head. “And maybe not even then. Let’s just not tell anyone, and elope, and present them with a fait accompli.”

“If I didn’t know better,” Dan says with a smug smile, “I’d think you’re ashamed to be marrying me.”

“Amy!” Selina yells, and Amy climbs to her feet and passes Ivy to Dan, tossing him a playful grin over her shoulder as she goes.

“No shit, Sherlock.”

In the end Selina does win, and they do tell everyone—not that night but soon thereafter—and his mom pressures them into having a ceremony, and it becomes a huge, exhausting thing to manage while they’re moving back to DC, with a toddler no less, and Amy and Dan fight approximately every 45 minutes.

But finally, it’s done, and they’re in their new townhouse alone—Ivy is having her first overnight at Amy’s parents’ house—and Dan asks as they pick at the caterer’s leftovers over the sink, “Do you feel different now that you’ve made an honest man out of me?”

Amy snorts. “Dan, I could break you down and rebuild you from the ground up, and I still wouldn’t be able to make an honest man out of you.” She fends off his fork when he goes for the last remaining roasted potato and steals it for herself. “But no, I don’t really feel different. You?”

He shrugs. “I dunno. I mean, this fucking ring is going to take some getting used to—“

“And I better not catch you without it either,” Amy warns. “Or they’ll be finding pieces of you in the Potomac for decades to come.”

“Yeah yeah,” he says with a wave. “But I guess, I’ve thought of you as my wife for a while now. This just makes it official.”

And yeah, a part of her thrills when he says something like that, but the other part is already rolling her eyes. “God, I’ve heard you spew some bullshit over the years, but that…”

He grins, unrepetant. “It’s too bad you nixed my idea to write our own vows, because I already had mine written and they were full of gold like that.”

Once that’s out there, there’s nothing left for them to do but to drink champagne while she forces him to read the vows and heckles him, because they may be husband and wife, but above all, they’re still Dan and Amy.

And she wouldn’t want it any other way.


End file.
